WHAT IS YOUR THESIS QUESTION? 

  1. I currently have two drafts of the design, one on “People, Data, Environment” and the other on “People, Society”. At the moment I’m more interested in the latter. With the recent course and news events happening around the world, I became interested in the key words “minorities, social inequality, prejudice, epidemic “. I wanted to use a design to ask or suggest these topics. The hope is to evoke the resonance of others through design.
  2. “Social class differences, racial discrimination,” these are historical social problems, but “epidemic discrimination” has been on the rise recently. With the development of science and technology and the development of network technology, our society seems to be polarized rather than harmonious.
  3. My design is for people to spend about five minutes thinking about the objectivity and morality of their own opinions about other people.

WHAT DO YOU PLAN TO MAKE? 

  • The works will be presented in the form of installation art. Participants were asked to stare at a 50-inch screen that played a video portrait of a person for one to two minutes. In addition, a camera was hidden behind the screen to capture the participants’ reactions (their facial expressions) during the session. When the footage is finished, the system will play the footage and the recorded by camera together . At this stage, participants could see subtle changes in their own facial expressions, causing them to think. Finally, participants can upload their own pictures if they wish. As the collection grew, the participants’ faces were combined into “human portraits”.
  • In society, people often have prejudice, but many people don’t know it. “It’s often hard to see ourselves clearly. If we can see ourselves from the outside, we can be more objective.” The portrait of human being contains all kinds of people of different genders, ages, nationalities, races and beliefs. I want to express the concept of “equality and harmonious coexistence of all beings” through this portrait.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT TO YOU? 

  • It is a shame that I am a biased person myself, and many of them are subconscious. In the post-epidemic period, hatred towards Chinese and Asians has emerged endlessly all over the world, and even violent incidents of studying abroad have occurred.
  • All kinds of discrimination are persistent diseases in our society. Maybe I can eliminate some problems through a little design to appeal to participants to pay attention to these problems.

WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS WITH THIS PROJECT? 

  • Let people confront the people they are discriminating against and let the vulnerable stand up. Hope there are enough people to make up the “portrait of humanity”.
  • It is hoped that everyone who has participated in this project will re-examine their own views and ask themselves: Is there discrimination against others? Do you understand these vulnerable groups in society?

INFLUENCES OR INSPIRATION?

  • 1 The Artist Is Present By Marina Abramović: I was first influenced by this work, in which I felt the function and power of gaze.
  • 2 Mona Lisa By Da Vinci: A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer, in order to most successfully engage the subject with the viewer.
  • 3 Afghan Girl By Steve McCurry: Then I wanted to find a classic portrait that was close to our time, and had a social and political label behind it.
  • 4 SNCF “Europe. It’s Just Next Door”: I want my audience to interact with my work and be universal. I really like the idea of globalization in this video and its simple and straightforward presentation.
  • 5 Stanford Researchers Tried to Create a ‘Gaydar’ Machine: In the technical means, there are a lot of scholars in the face synthesis. It stands for eliminating discrimination and living in harmony.
  • 6 Portraits of Power By Alejandro Almaraz : If a random synthetic face can assimilate our appearance, this work does the opposite, highlighting the label of a particular person or group. Politicians, dictators.
  • 7 Lie to me: Although it is a fictional TV series, the “studies facial expressions and involuntary body language” in it is worth discussing. It is true that we will instinctively show some expressions and behaviors when we come into contact with various people or things.
  • 8 Micro Expressions Training: Following on from the TV show, there is an organization that studies and trains facial expressions. People often don’t notice these details.
  • 9  Revealing True Emotions Through Micro-Expressions: A Machine Learning Approach：The study provides an algorithmic approach to identify facial expressions.
  • 10 Cyborg manifesto By Donna Haraway: In it, the concept of the cyborg is a rejection of rigid boundaries, notably those separating “human” from “animal” and “human” from “machine.”

HOW DO YOU ENVISION REALIZING THIS PROJECT?

  • My profile requires a wide variety of volunteers from different social classes, genders, ages, races, faiths, and income levels. Material to be concise, vitality, diversity.
  • I wanted the camera to be setting directly behind the screen and shot through the screen so that the eyes of the participants would be focused on the center of the camera. In addition, the synthetic “human portrait” can look as beautiful(authentic) as possible.
  • This art installation requires at least a monitor, a camera, a computer, an empty room, and several programs (facial image capture, mass image synthesis).
  • Maybe many organizations could use my device, such as the BLM and QUEERS organizations. The audience I envisioned was everyone in society.
  • The classification of fragments of volunteers being shown can be refined and, in the future, applied to specific scenarios. In addition, to some extent, I also want to collect data anonymously. For example, the participants’ facial expressions were collected when they were faced with a particular object.

OPTIONAL QUESTIONS (approx 2-3 sentences each)

  • WHAT ARE YOUR AREAS OF STRENGTH?
  • WHAT AREAS DO YOU NEED TO WORK ON?
  • TECHNOLOGIES YOU WANT TO EXPLORE IN MORE DEPTH?

TAGS

 “installation”, “anti-discrimination”, “identity”, “self-inspect”, “Biometric”